March 2014

Leading to the gigabit promised land?

[Commentary] US broadband pundits endlessly debate where we are instead of where we need to be, quarreling over interpretations of today's international broadband rankings or, in the case of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, urgently holding a hearing on a program that the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission already shut down. These discussions are about headlines, not about progress. By design, they only look backward, implicating the policies of previous generations. Worse, they distract us from tackling the real task at hand: how we help our country develop the infrastructure we need to lead in the 21st century information economy.

Press-driven, short-term thinking has consequences. Washington's habit of pointing fingers and obsessing about the past obviously hasn't convinced business leaders that future-proofing our country is a US priority. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead, we had hearings on what we need to do today to lead 5, 10, or 15 years hence? Surely, a timeless lesson of the last four books of the Old Testament is this: The point is not to debate one's location in the desert. It is to get to the Promised Land. In the US, old policies continue to drive private capital to outmoded networks, and FCC policies under the previous chair actually made it more difficult to build world-leading networks. Until recently, incumbent providers waved off communities' desires for next-generation networks, insisting that customers don't want higher speeds. Meanwhile, in our schools, when students take online assessments, the rest of the district must refrain from sending e-mail to avoid a network overload; our health care facilities find it quicker to send a thumb drive with CAT scan results via messenger than wait for the data to transfer; and a third of our homes don't even have broadband, which, among other things, is becoming the only way to apply for a job. We need to stop debating the past and start figuring out the future.

[Levin heads up the Gig.U project, a consortium of 36 research university communities seeking to accelerate the deployment of next generation networks]

New All-Digital Curriculums Hope to Ride High-Tech Push in Schoolrooms

English language curriculums built entirely on a digital platform -- replacing written textbooks, worksheets or printed study guides -- are about to enter the market from several companies, with promises that they will change the nature of classroom learning across the country.

The Obama Administration has pledged to provide high-speed Internet connections to 15,000 schools over the next two years, districts are purchasing tablets and laptops for students, and on Feb 28, President Obama announced $400 million in corporate commitments from the software companies Adobe and Prezi, which will donate software to teachers. Meanwhile, other companies are rushing in. Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City public schools and the current chief executive of Amplify, the education unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, will introduce a digital English language arts curriculum for middle school. Klein said the new software, which will run on a variety of devices and is priced at $45 per student a year, includes videos, games and vocabulary apps and allows teachers to track student writing and give feedback directly online.

Web-Enabled Toothbrushes Join the Internet of Things

What the world needs now is a Web-enabled toothbrush. That part is clear to several oral-hygiene companies. What they can't agree on is who was first to put teeth into the smartphone. This race to wire the world's jaws is playing out in one of tech's buzziest arenas: the so-called Internet of things. Giants like Google, which recently bought a networked-thermostat maker called Nest, are investing, as are smaller startups. New products include smart socks (to measure running form) and connected water bottles (to gather water-consumption data.)

Liberty Media Watching TWC, Comcast Deal With Interest

Charter Communications 's biggest shareholder, Liberty Media, isn't taking "any option off the table" regarding its interest in Time Warner Cable, Liberty Chief Executive Greg Maffei told analysts.

Charter still hasn't withdrawn a slate of 13 nominees that it had proposed for election to Time Warner Cable's board at its annual meeting this spring. Even so, a person familiar with the situation said that a counteroffer from Charter wasn't being prepared. Maffei said Liberty will "watch with interest" how Comcast's agreed purchase of Time Warner Cable proceeds, including "whether there are divestitures, whether that deal ultimately gets completed and what it all means." Comcast's bid faces regulatory scrutiny, as it combines the No. 1 and No. 2 cable operators. Still, Maffei said he assumed regulators will approve it "under some set of conditions."

Hill draws criticism over NSA oversight

Splashing America’s surveillance secrets on the front pages of newspapers for nearly nine months has created an array of scapegoats, from Edward Snowden to the National Security Agency and President Barack Obama. Now the blame is also spreading to Congress.

Cries of lax Capitol Hill oversight are piling up as Snowden-inspired stories continue to explode in the media, casting doubt on whether the legislative watchdogs can be trusted to oversee national security agencies that they’ve long defended. Intelligence Committee leaders from the House and Senate insist they’ve done their due diligence but acknowledge that lawmakers can glean only as much information as the president and his team will share. And even then, anything of such a highly classified nature can’t be legally disclosed anyway. Still, a “trust us” promise from the lawmakers with the highest of high-security clearances isn’t satisfying critics.

Thousands Take to the Streets to Support Hong Kong Press Freedom

Thousands of people turned out in Hong Kong to support media freedom after the condition of former newspaper editor Kevin Lau, who was the victim of a brutal knife attack, took a turn for the better. Protesters at the demonstration, clad in black with blue ribbons to show support for press freedom, marched to the Hong Kong Police headquarters carrying banners saying "They Can't Kill Us All." Others called on Hong Kong police to find the people responsible for the attack.

China speeds past Europe on 4G mobile rollout

China has overtaken Europe by building hundreds of thousands of masts to carry superfast 4G mobile signals and Western executives warn it will pull further ahead with its plans to more than double construction this year. While the take-up of 4G services in China lags behind the rollout of base stations -- given services only became commercially available last month -- the scale of the infrastructure building underlines the country’s ambitions.

Benton

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